Sunday, May 21, 2006 Last modified: Saturday, May 20, 2006 11:54 PM PDT

By: Gus Thomson, Journal Staff Writer

Last week's showdown in Auburn over the Auburn dam proved one thing.

Fifty years of arguing has sucked any spontaneity out of the debate.

Protesters wielded signs that could have been written 10, 20 or even 30 years ago.

Many of the speakers on both sides have been battling for or against an Auburn dam for decades.

And the arguments themselves are getting long in the tooth, based on studies that date back to the late 1980s and beyond on issues like earthquake probability, flooding risks, environmental consequences and dam-construction economics.

A new study with new estimates this summer could arm both proponents and detractors with updated perspectives on important issues like costs if an Auburn dam project were to again start rumbling forward. The study is to be released in August, with a new price tag estimated likely in the multi-millions.

Last Monday's board meeting of the American River Authority - including a three-hour marathon discussion on the Auburn dam - has given both sides an early window into the present-day stances of many of the major players.

Chairman Bruce Kranz, a pro-dam supervisor representing the eastern end of Placer County, talked about how construction of the multipurpose mega-project could provide flood protection for the Sacramento area that would be more than double what it would be after a planned Folsom dam raise and levees are improved. Under Kranz's scenario, Placer County could use power and water sales from the dam to pay its portion of the cost of the structure, if the authority took on a local sponsorship role.

But Friends of the River conservation director Steve Evans, who identified himself at the hearing as someone who lives and works in downtown Sacramento, noted that Sacramento, Sacramento County and the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency are not in the American River Authority.

"You can't make decisions for entities in the flood plain," Evans noted. Evans' organization is one of the leading advocates in California of river preservation. Evans has been battling the Auburn dam since at least 1990, when he was hired as a staff member. He added that with higher water levels needed for water and power, and lower water levels needed for flood protection, an Auburn dam would have oddly competing purposes.

Evans was one of several speakers at last Monday's meeting to mention the possibility of an earthquake at the dam site. Studies sparked by an earthquake near the Oroville dam focussed attention in the late 1970s on the Auburn dam. Construction, which had been authorized a decade earlier, was shut down soon afterward. Studies would later recommend construction of a dam that could be built to withstand a quake of 6.5 magnitude on the Richter scale and movement of - depending on the study - one to five inches.

Meadow Vista's Gord Ainsleigh, a distance runner and chiropractor, cited three faults at the site and the possibility that the Oroville quake suggested the Auburn reservoirs water-weight would induce its own seismic event.

Ainsleigh said that building the dam would force residents to buy earthquake insurance. In his case, the cost would be $500 a year. Area residents would be forced to pay billions yearly in added insurance, he said.

But another voice from the Auburn dam past - retired U.S. Bureau of Reclamation employee Mike Schaefer - was quick to counter quake arguments with his own.

Schaefer served as the bureau's last Auburn construction division chief, closing the Maidu Drive office overlooking the dam site in the 1990s. He said the bureau recorded more than 30 faults in the area of the dam with many occurring more than 100 million years ago.

Oroville's earthquake-induced seismicity was never proven, he said, adding that there are 55 dams in California more than two million acre-feet - about the size of a multi-purpose Auburn dam.

"There is not proof any of them had reservoir-induced earthquakes," Schaefer said.

If an earthquake took place, speakers like Tony Finnerty, a retired geologist from Nevada County, warned of the destruction from a failed Auburn dam and the wall of water opponents predict will head downhill. Finnerty said his investigation in 1990 of seismic studies indicated there was a good chance a quake would hit in the dam's first 100 years.

"It's unconscionable to build an Auburn dam above Sacramento," he said.

The debate at the authority meeting took on the tone of dueling disasters as some speakers warned of the wall of water hitting Sacramento if a quake shook the dam and others expressed concern over flooding if the dam wasn't built to control upstream American River water flows during heavy rains.

Others said they were concerned about the dam's potentially disastrous impact on wilderness and recreational areas inundated when water backed up in the reservoir.

Joe Medeiros, a biologist who lives in Auburn, described arguments for the Auburn dam based on water needs and flood concerns as scare tactics.

"We don't want Sacramento to flood but maybe they shouldn't be building in the floodplain," he said.

Authority Director Jack Sweeney, an El Dorado County supervisor, raised jeers from many anti-dam supporters when he played the drought card.

"I tell you, when you start looking for a glass of drinking water for your child in the third year of drought, you may laugh differently," he said.

The Auburn dam proposal marked 50 years this March since the first funding legislation was introduced. It continues to spur strong feelings - as evidenced by this past week's stormy session before the American River Authority.

In the end, the board voted 4-1 to ask for more answers on what its role would be if it were to take on the local partner mantel.

More debate should be coming later this year with the completion of the bureau's million-dollar study on costs.

The Auburn dam debate isn't going away - and neither are the people who feel strongly about the long-discussed proposal in the American River canyon below Auburn. That was evidenced last week, with a full house of 200-plus people inside the county Board of Supervisors chambers.

The Journal's Gus Thomson can be reached at gust@goldcountrymedia.com